John Kerry Makes Last Ditch Effort To Avert World War III As Saudis, Turks Prepare For Syria Invasion

Tomorrow, John Kerry will meet Sergei Lavrov and several of his other counterparts from Europe and the Mid-East in Munich in a last ditch effort to revive Syrian peace talks, which fell apart amid an intense Russian air assault on rebel positions in Aleppo.

For all intents and purposes, the rebels are surrounded. Initially, it appeared that the “moderate” opposition might be able to persist and bog down the Russians and the Iranians with the help of supplies from the US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Those hopes faded over the past two weeks when Hezbollah advanced on Aleppo and ultimately encircled the city, cutting the rebels off from key supply lines and triggering a mass civilian exodus.

The talks in the Bavarian capital come at what is perhaps the most crucial point in the conflict to date. With the opposition on the ropes, it’s do or die time for Riyadh, Ankara, Doha, and the UAE. Either the Gulf monarchies send in ground troops to shore up the rebels or Hezbollah and the IRGC will overrun them in a matter of weeks - or perhaps even days.

Of course the opposition’s Sunni benefactors can’t exactly say they’re going into Syria to fight Iran and the Russians. Any ground incursion will be justified by the need to “fight ISIS” even though the Islamic State presence in Aleppo is markedly less pronounced than in other besieged urban centers like Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. Indeed, the effort is so transparent that even the mainstream media has been forced to acknowledge it. Here’s FT, for instance:

Saudi Arabia is discussing plans to deploy ground troops with regional allies, including Turkey, for a safe zone in Syria, in a last-ditch effort to keep alive a rebellion at risk of collapse as a Russian-backed offensive by Syrian regime forces encroaches on the northern province of Aleppo.

Although western officials have dismissed the plans as lacking credibility, they are a sign of the desperation that many of Syria’s opposition backers feel towards what looks like an increasingly bleak outcome in the war. Two people familiar with Saudi plans told the Financial Times that high-ranking Gulf officials are in Riyadh meeting Turkish officials to discuss options for deploying ground troops to head a coalition of fighters inside Syria.

Aleppo city, Syria’s former business hub, is the last significant urban centre controlled by the rebels. Its countryside, on the northern border with Turkey, is their lifeline.

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, bolstered by Iranian-funded Shia militias, advanced last week into opposition-held territory in Aleppo’s northern countryside under the cover of Russian air strikes. The violence prompted thousands of civilians to flee, exacerbating the already vast humanitarian crisis.

Publicly, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain are calling for troops to be deployed as part of the US-led international coalition already ranged against Isis. This comes after Washington singled out Arab countries for not doing more to fight the Islamist group. But regional observers say the moves are cover for an intervention to help the Syrian rebels.

Of course the most absurd aspect of the "fight ISIS" narrative is that the force which is most effective at combatting Islamic State - the YPG- is under attack by Turkey. That would be the same Turkey who, like everyone else, is using ISIS to justify its intervention in Syria. "Are you our side or the side of the terrorist PYD and PKK organization?" President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked, in a speech in Ankara to provincial officials on Wednesday. He went on to say the US has caused "a sea of blood" in Turkey by supporting the YPG in Syria. "Ankara summoned the U.S. ambassador to express its displeasure after State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Monday the United States did not regard the PYD as a terrorist organization," Reuters notes.

As for the opposition in Aleppo, the rebels are literally begging the US to intervene. "I believe he can really stop these attacks by the Russians," Spokesman Salim al-Muslat told Reuters, referring to President Obama. If he is willing to save our children it is really the time now to say 'no' to these strikes in Syria. I believe he can do it but it is really strange for us that we don't hear this from him."

Actually it's not at all strange. John Kerry can't simply "ask" Sergei Lavrov to stop the bombing in Aleppo. As he told aid workers in London over the weekend, the US can't exactly "go to war with Russia," which is what would be required to compel the Kremlin to halt airstrikes on rebel positions.

The French are also skeptical of America's ability to halt the Russian and Iranian offensive. "There are the ambiguities including among the actors of the coalition ... I'm not going to repeat what I've said before about the main pilot of the coalition," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. "But we don't have the feeling that there is a very strong commitment that is there."

Again though, it's not a matter of "commitment." It's a matter of whether or not the US wants to challenge Russia and Iran militarily because as should be abundantly clear by now, this has nothing at all to do with ISIS and everything to do with what's about to happen at Aleppo. “It’s seen as the heart of what’s left of the rebel movement in terms of holding a major city without being infested by Islamic State,” Julian Barnes-Dacey, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations told Bloomberg. “If Assad can get that, then it’s hard to imagine the opposition surviving.”

Precisely. Which was the plan from the beginning. It's not that Russia and Iran don't want to fight Islamic State. They do. But unlike Washington and its regional allies, Moscow has never pretended that the fight in Syria is strictly about ISIS. Rather, the conflict is about putting down an insurgency that threatens to plunge yet another Mid-East country into failed state status and it's also about drawing a line in the sand when it comes to the West's persistent meddling in the affairs of sovereign states. The most effective way to turn the tide and end the insurgency is to recapture the country's urban centers first, and Aleppo is crucial to that plan. Once it's secured, they'll be a push east to liberate Raqqa and relegate ISIS to the annals of jihadist history.

We suppose the most important thing to understand here is this: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the UAE are mulling sending ground troops to fight the Russians and Iranians who are attempting to put an end to an insurgency that's cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. That campaign has most assuredly aggravated the violence in the short-term, but it's an effort to restore a sense of normalcy to a country that's seen nothing but chaos for nearly six years. Rather than let Moscow and Hezbollah finish the job, the US and its regional Sunni allies would rather send in ground troops to prop up the rebels. So please tell us: who are the bad guys and who are the good guys here?

Also gotta start WWIII so as to shift the blame for the imminent financial collapse. Then it will be so much easier to rewrite history / implement world government with the same cronies pulling the strings.

Putin knows he just has to ride out the collapse of the West. If he doesn't take the WWIII bait, or if an American revolution gets going, Israel might nuke America and frame Russia. Get two goyim superpowers to wipe each other out. How convenient.

The Russian South Military District's air land and sea exercises were to make sure that they were fully up to speed pending an expected thrust east by the Ukrainian Government. The SMD is over the border from Ukraine.

Such a move is expected as a diversionary tactic reducing their capability by making Moscow fight on two fronts at once.

Given that there is virtually no Russian Army involvement in Syria, apart from logistics and battle management, this is probably a forlorn hope. In fact quite the opposite might apply as the RA are desperate to get some career enhancing action, sick of the RuAF getting all the glory and the RUN getting some. Interservice rivalry applies all round the world!

Porosheko may not have any option. He heads an unpopular government. He cannot implement Minsk 2 because he cannot get major parts of it passed by his Parliament, the Rada. He has a Right wing movement, now heavily armed, and barely under control, desperate to stick it to the 'scum' in the East. Finally the economy is going down the tubes with even the IMF reluctant to lend more money.

He needs a government's traditional way of diverting the population's attention, something to move the blame onto, a war. Bit like the US atm!

If he then gets hammered, which he will as this time as there is little that the Russians will lose by going all in especially if they stop at the DNR/LPR borders, he will plead to all and sundry on the world stage about the evil Russians, hoping for more support than he is getting now.

"...The Russian South Military District's air land and sea exercises were to make sure that they were fully up to speed pending an expected thrust east by the Ukrainian Government..."

The Russians are not going to overtly oppose Ukraine by sending in troops. The units on alert in the Southern District are airborne troops, and any Russian respone to trouble in SYRIA would come by air (or sea) transport from Crimea and the Southern District. Russia has been keeping an eye on Ukraine this whole time - they expected and were already prepared for Ukraine to attack. That isn't a suprise to them requiring airborne units to go on alert. I'm suprised Ukriane even has enough troops to mount an attack - I would have thought every man of military service age has left Ukriane by now. Who wants to die for Porky and Yats?

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are a differnt matter enitrely. You can't predict the actions of insane crackheads - everything they do is a suprise. Russia is worried about them, not business-as-usual Ukraine.

You bet, the moment intel comes in to show the Turks/Saudi's crossing the Syrian border, those airborne units will show up in Syria 24hrs later. Syrian Airspace will be declared a no fly zone for all non Russian/Syrian aircraft. I'm betting it will come to a game of blink and unfortunately uncle Sam will lose because it has no assets/logistics/finances in position to affect the outcome. If I was the USA, I'd be thinking of an exit strategy as its about to have a lot of poop on its face, paper tiger comes to mind.

Lest we forget, 1.2 billion people are Buddhist/Chinese folk religion, another few hundred million are miscellaneous Buddhist, a solid billion are Hindu...

That guy focuses on Abrahamic religion and prophecy, as is his wont. But how will the NWO fold in the multiple billion people who aren't Christian, Muslim, or Jewish? How impressed will they be by the antics described on that blog?

I hate to say it, but I think that guy's obvious Christian background is coloring his expectations too much. Why go to all the trouble with all those moving parts, instead of just making the NWO a fait accompli one morning and ushering it in with a (brief) period of peace, prosperity, and amnesty in order to generate the same amount of popular support as they'd obtain with the theatrics?

You might wish to rethink that position because everyone from the Pope to the Dalai Lama is in on this New World Religion.

"Jerusalem, 20 February 2006 (By Matthew Wagner, The Jeruslaem Post) - Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger called on Sunday for the establishment of 'a religious United Nations' representing the religious leaders of all the countries in the world. Metzger suggested establishing the religious UN in Jerusalem and placing the Dalai Lama at its head."

"The Dalai Lama, a self-proclaimed admirer of the Jewish people, has met in the past with Jewish rabbis and spiritual leaders to learn more about Judaism and more specifically how to survive in exile.

One of these meetings was depicted in The Jew in the Lotus, by Rodger Kamenetz. Much in common was found between Jewish Kabbala and Buddhist Tantric mediations."

I don't feel the need to nail my religion down to any label. That said, I know a lot more about Buddhism than the average bear. They can trot the Dalai Lama out all they want, but there's nothing that obligates 120 million Japanese Shinto/Buddhists to pay an interest. And then there's Hinduism, which takes the sectarian disagreements of Christianity and cranks it up to 11 with devotional loyalty being split across scores of ethnic groups; regions; languages; clans; and localities.

I think my biggest criticisms of RedefiningGod is how many moving parts the scheme has, and how many Christian fundies will actually fall for it. Speaking for my extended family, they have a kind of blinkered, monomanical stupidity that's too incurious to fool with outrageous and complicated plots.

I cover this primarily from the Abrahamic perspective because the Cabalist Jews are the ones calling the tune, and because their endgame is to institute a Judaized Christian religion for the world. But rest assured that they have plans to impress the Buddhists and Hindus with their own eschatological fulfillments.

That's the thing - neither escatology nor miracles are considered particularly impressive to far East philosophy, Buddhism particularly so. Buddhist scripture is of course full of miraclous happenings and magical powers, but followers are actively discouraged from paying that sort of stuff too much attention, because it's a distraction from the central work of developing one's consicousness. Now as a Westerer I can only speak about Buddhism as it's filtered into the West - perhaps a more philosophical and esoteric Buddhism than is common practice in its native lands. But the entire paradigm for spiritual authority is different. A skilled thief is considered a more spiritual figure than a genially dumb cleric.

Tell that to Saudi Arabia, Veriton. They are staging a massive military exercise involving 29 other Arab/Gulf countries right now and it's scheduled to last about three weeks. Reports are (combined) anywhere from 150,000 to 350,000 troops - right now, TODAY - participating in the 'exercise' in Saudi Arabia and (apparently) Jordan.

There's also 2,500 aircraft and 20,000 tanks participating. It's the largest exercise of a combined Arab/Gulf force EVER.

If Saudi Arabia wanted to invade Syria from the south and Turkey from the north, then the schedule needs to be adjusted for sometime in the next couple of weeks. The Saudi Military may be soft, but when you have a combined force of a quarter-million troops or so handy, well....

Of course Russia and Iran will respond, but they don't have anywhere near the capability today to handle large simultaneous invasions in Syria's north and south. ZATO will secretly be doing command and control, so the arguments about legality or authorization are irrelevant. ZATO just upsized their proxy terrorist armies for a quick Syrian land grab. By time Russia or Iran can mount an appropriate response, everyone will be crying about diplomacy and peace negotiations. ZATO will end up with it's Sunnistan and Qatari pipeline route unless Russia goes nuclear.

Aleppo is roughly 60% Government and 40% terrorist controlled. Much of the population is in the former. Both sides shell each other and the terrorists dig tunnels and then explode a mine at the end of them, which is perhaps OK on a front line but not quite so in a city. Apart from random groups of fighters, as the lead-in says, there is not much ISIS in the city, they are cut off from it. Most of the population that could move is now out of town with much of it reduced to rubble. Think Berlin 1945.

When the Turks, sorry terrorists, took over their part of the city, as they did elsewhere they stripped it of anything useful, especially manufacturing and office equipment. All over Syria, convoys of gear, some carrying complete factories, moved back into Turkey, were reassembled and are now operated by favoured members of the governing clan. Think Germany post WW2. This is one of the reasons for the refugees, all their jobs disappeared over the border.

Aleppo is neither surrounded nor cut off from supplies from Turkey. It probably will be but below is a link to a map showing yesterday's positions where there is a clear access loop around the top out to Idlib in the west and Turkey. Any movement in the area is at risk but 'gear' and manpower still moves.

The Government area is redish, the top left is Kurd controlled, ISIS is top right, west of Aleppo is mixed terrorist groups. The Government area is expanding north into the mixed terrorist area heading towards the Turkish border. This is the area that generated the Turkish/Saudi 'Aleppo cut off' angst as a week ago there was free movement north (with a proper road) until the Government closed that gap a few days ago.